Sarah Thyre reads author David Sedaris' "The Last Time You'll Ever Hear from Me," a story of the ultimate Machiavellian scheming.

When a pet dies, to what degree can it be replaced by another? And to what degree can pets replace people in our lives? David Sedaris tells this story of cats and dogs and other animals.

David Sedaris comes from a big family, who for many years growing up, took annual vacations to the same beach house. In this story, David tells us about losing a sister last year, and how her death prompted a family reunion back at the beach.

One Halloween, David Sedaris decides to skip all the fake monsters and ghosts and zombies and visit the real thing: dead people, in a morgue. (14 minutes)David’s latest book is Happy-Go-Lucky.

When a pet dies, to what degree can it be replaced by another? And to what degree can pets replace people in our lives? David Sedaris tells this story of cats and dogs and other animals.

Where do we go when we die? Producer David Kestenbaum learns that the answer's pretty bureaucratic. 

One day at church camp, David Maxon challenged the devil to show himself. Just then, a huge thunderstorm started, and David felt sure the devil was behind it.

Senior editor David Kestenbaum helps his kids set up an ant farm. They follow all the instructions, to the letter! But he ends up learning a lesson he’s pretty sure the manufacturer did not intend.

Rebecca was 16 years old when her mother Elizabeth died of cancer. But before she died, she wrote letters to Rebecca, to be given to her on her birthday each year for thirteen years.

David Rakoff tells the story of the day that used to hold the record as the worst disaster in New York history: June 15th, 1904, when the steamship The General Slocum, caught fire and sank in the Hudson river, killing 1,031 passengers. Almost everyone aboard was from one neighborhood in New York, and by all accounts, that neighborhood was never the same again.

Allen Wigington, former Chief Deputy at the Pickens County Sheriff's department, now magistrate judge, tells the story a soldier killed in Iraq—Specialist David Collins—arriving back home in Georgia to be buried.

Contributor Samuel James thought he knew what happened to his mother. But he was wrong.

An Allen Ginsberg poem and Ira Glass.

In the 1920s, at the height of the Spiritualism movement, a friendship blossomed between two men with opposing views on the topic: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini was a skeptic.

In 1946, a man named David Boder started to investigate the Holocaust before it was known as the Holocaust. He dragged a primitive recording device around Europe and gathered the first recorded testimonials of concentration camp survivors.

Host Ira Glass talks about trying to figure out what to say to his dying mom. He's sure that someday he'll wish he said something different than what he actually said.

Reporter Mark Arax spent three years investigating the murder of his father and yet he's still not at peace when he thinks of his dad's death. (His book is called In My Father's Name.) This is how it goes sometimes: We create a story that tries to explain our lives, and it still leaves so much unanswered.

In our search for events that might illuminate what we've seen in New York this week, we hear interviews with survivors of a terrorist attack that happened in a crowded city, during rush hour, just six years ago. On March 20, 1995, the Aum cult dropped plastic bags of poison gas on the Tokyo subway.

Michael Lesy reads.

Genevieve Jurgensen and her husband Laurent lost their two daughters—Elise and Mathilde—at the ages of 4 and 7. Actress Felicity Jones reads from her book The Disappearance: A Memoir of Loss, in which Jurgensen tries to explain their lives and their deaths to a friend, in a series of letters.

The story of how an understanding of Bible prophecy by the FBI could have prevented the tragedy at Waco at the Branch Davidians compound.

Writer Shalom Auslander reads his short story about how he decided to start forgetting the dead, even though his job required him to remember. Shalom's most recent book is Hope: A Tragedy.

There’s a problem with having a Facebook account after you’re dead that you’ve never, ever, ever thought about. Producer Stephanie Foo tells this story, about Dave Maher.

When you get to know someone, really know them, you can almost predict their behavior. It's comforting, this intimacy.